If
there are things you don't know about, like places and people I
mention, you can go
here to find out what they are all about.

AKIC
Weekly Features:

I
in in China!我的中文马马虎虎。我自学中文。我没有老师。我老婆觉得我的中文很差。他说我和我儿子不可以一起说中文。

I
am Canadian!
I think of the
mountains of British Columbia that I have seen.

I
am Latvian (sort of)! I wish
Latvia all the best. It
pains me that they can't be better at hockey.

Politically
I am Conservative/Reactionary!
I can think of any other philosophy that give me any succour.

I
teach English! I am entering
the tenth year of teaching English at my school.

I
am not a freak! Then again
maybe I am. Ten years of teaching English at the same school. What
the hell am I thinking?

I
like to Read! Here
is what I had been working my way through the past week:

Don
Colacho's Aphorisms. There are 2,988 of them in this book
that I compiled for myself. I read ten aphorisms at a time.
I cut and paste the better ones -- they are all profound actually --
and I put them in my weekly blog entry. (See below)

Ulysses
by James Joyce. I am following along with Frank
Delaney as he slowly guides podcast listeners through
Joyce's hard-to-read novel. Delaney figures he will have the
whole novel covered in about 22 years. Delaney completed
episode #167 this week and is working his way through the chapter
that introduces Leopold Bloom. I am getting ahead of Delaney as far
as reading the book. I will be finished my reading of it, I
figure, in a year. I read the novel despite its many blasphemies.
It is best to be aware of this stuff because the world is full of it,
and the world will always find a way of slapping you in the face with
it

The
Holy Bible King James Version. I am reading a
chapter a day of the greatest book of all-time. I have
finished the Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Thessalonians
and am reading the First Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy.

The
Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Like Father Schall's writings, I have been able to place them on the
Dotdotdot app.

Four
Men by Hilaire Belloc.
Grizzlebeard, the Sailor, the Poet, and Myself are the four men.
They travel and talk. It gives me an idea for a book and a blog.
The pdf copy of the book I was reading was missing a few pages so I
had to interrupt reading the book till I found a better copy on the
Internet. [I found a black and white pdf scan of the book (never get
a color scan because it takes your device too long to render the page
images!) which contained all the pages, and finished the book
lickety-split. I highly recommend it. It is a kind of fantasy for
me to meet people, even for a short time, who love to argue and know
that souls exist.]

Diary
of a Nobody by Weedon Goldsmith. I
don't know if I got this book because I liked the title or because I
found a recommendation for it on the Web. Either way, I like it. It
is funny! Mister Gowing is coming, and Mister Cummings is going!
What fun!

The
New Republic by WH Mallock. I
am reading it because mention of it was made in the comment sections
of one of the recent entries in David Warren's blog. Half way
through it, I wonder why it is that I hadn't heard of this book till
last week. It is great and it is deals with all the issues I like to
reflect on.

There
are only two from Don Colacho this week. Now that I have gotten
through all 2988 of his aphorisms, I am reading the essays of his
that I included with my compilation. Here are two quotes from that:

The
spectacular, empty gesture earns public applause, but the disdain of
those governed by reflection.

The
reactionary is not a nostalgic dreamer of a canceled past, but rather
a hunter of sacred shades upon the eternal hills.

Gregorio
Carbone:

...to
go to heaven is to align oneself with life and to go to hell to align
oneself with matter.

I
fashion myself to be a 21st Century Pepys

Monday
[August 18]

[iPod]

One
Thumb Blogging done at a beach. As Tony plays, I type.

Things
I learned today:

Looking
before turning right is taught in driving school but Chinese then
don't do it once they get their license.

Community
police have informants and party members to rely on.

They
also have propaganda duties to do.

Disputes
between residents and migrant workers caused by cultural
differences. Migrants not very civilized and don't know what
to do with trash. This keeps the community police busy.

The
local Hui Shan government has sold land. It was its major
source of revenue. I can't determine what it's major source of
revenue is currently now that it had sold all the land that it can
sell.

My
apartment is classified as commercial, not residential because the
land was taken from the original residents and given to commercial
developers.

Businessmen
think the Chinese economy is slowing down. The one I know says
he has to find more business in America. India is not a good
option he tells me because the workers there are lazy because the
government has supplied their basic needs.

I
am still uncomfortable with silence when others are in my midst.

Finished
watching Johnny Guitar starring Joan Crawford who didn't play Johnny
Guitar. Acting slightly overwrought but it was an okay movie
all the same. It had great scenic vistas and a good story.

The
sun sets and the bats come out. I wonder where they sleep
during the day. I cannot count the bats now because there are
so many flying about. Size wise, the bats here are bigger than
butterflies and smaller than common birds. They meander in a circular
manner and so I would get a sore neck and would become dizzy if I
tried to track their path for more than an instant.

I take
Tony to the beach near Casa Kaulins so he can play with his toy dump
truck and backhoe. Four young men walk by. They strip to
their underwear and take a dip. They have a great laugh as they
splash each other. To my temperament, it is a corny sort of
fun, but how dare I judge others innocent enjoyments!

Tony
wades in the water. I wish he wouldn't.

Tony joins up
with a family that has brought a plastic shovel and pail to the
beach.It
rained this afternoon and so it feels relatively cooler.

It's
spitting rain now even though the sky above is mostly blue.

Here
at the beach, I see a man has dipped his e-bike into the water
so he can wash it. Now I wonder if some guy with do the same
thing with his car. As the man rides his bike away, the riding
through the beach's sand must defeat his purpose.

Dark clouds
on the horizon.

Tony invited me into the water. No
doing.

The Moon is 90 percent. I hope to see a bat fly
in front of it, but they seem to have stopped flying above the nearby
trees. I should monitor the habits of bats more closely.

[Home
Laptop]

Tony
lost
one of the two toys, he had brought with him, when we were at the
beach. He was leaving his toys in the sand and then suddenly
deciding to run far from them. I warned about this but he didn't
listen. As it got dark and I was able to find one of the toys but
not the other. Tony says it was stolen but I think he dropped it in
the water.

I
told Tony to not tell Jenny that he had lost the toy, but he told her
first thing when we returned to the apartment. And so Jenny is not
happy and so Tony & I are both the targets of her ire.

I
phoned my cousin Idi last night to offer her condolences on the death
of her mother Dzidra.

I
also phoned my Mom. My brother and sister, I learned, are together
in BC at the moment.

[School
Laptop]

I
work 13:00 to 21:00 today.

Things
I just saw: 1)A man comes to my bus stop in the morning who is
paralyzed on his right side. When he moves he use the paralyzed leg
as a crutch and his paralyzed arm is flung in the air. 2)A family of
three rides in the front of their tricycle wagon. From the angle I
was initially watching them it seemed as if the little girl who was
sitting next to her mother was dangling in mid-air. I didn't see the
actual solidness of the girl's sitting position till the wagon rode
past and I could see that the girl was sitting on her mother's lap,
and her mother in turn had her feet planted firmly on an area below
the tricycle's steering apparatus.

The
85 Bakery, near our school, has re-opened. The place is bigger but
its pickup counter is absurdly narrow. The counter area which had a
small glass display case has been replaced with a tall case that goes
right to the ceiling and thus there is less room for pickups.

Wednesday
[August 21]

[School
Laptop]

I
work 13:00 to 21:00. I arrive at school at 10:45 because that's the
kind of guy I am.

I
should call the upcoming weekend, a celebration of Tony's six years
weekend.

I
had a leisurely morning at home before I went to work. I put a Guns
'N Roses song on my Ipod and the film The Man from Laramie on my
Ipad.

Last
night, Tony continually refused my entreaties to have him give me
back my Ipad.

Listening
to an Econtalk podcast this morning confirmed some things that a
businessman I know had told me about India. The current government
of India has been increasing their giving out of what Americans would
call food stamps.

The
Indian Economics professor also had this to say about China: China
is seen as a place where wealth accumulation is the main concern of
the population and there is a lack of empathy for others.

Thursday [August 22]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 21:00 today.

This morning, I looked out the
window of the Casa K living room to see a white van parked on the
road just below our apartment. The van's back door was open and
around it stood six men. I, of course, took a photo for the
Casa Kaulins Blog. Then glancing out the Casa K master bedroom
window, I saw that there was also a crane about two stories high, and
of course I took of a photo of that for the CK Blog.

I late phoned Jenny to ask her
what was up with the workers and their crane. As I suspected, our
apartment buildings are going to be shiny in the night as the workers
are installing lights on the rooftops of the apartment buildings.

It is Tony's B-day minus one.
That is, it is Tony's birthday tomorrow. I have four toys that I
bought for him in the drawer of my desk. My plan is to bring two of
the toys to Casa Kaulins tonight, and find a way to surprise Tony
with them tomorrow – I am thinking to phone him and give him
directions to the toys' hiding spot. I then envisage that I will
bring the other toy or toys to Casa Kaulins tomorrow night and then
give it or them to Tony when I arrive home.

Because I work tomorrow and then
Saturday, there won't be a birthday party for Tony until Sunday.

I listened to a podcast about the
Economic crisis, a podcast about politics, a podcast of a homily from
EWTN, and then a podcast by Adam Carolla where he talks to some guy
named Norton who likes to be pleasured when he gets massages. Quite
a clash of views therein you could say. You could also say my tastes
are quite electric, though I know when I first heard someone describe
their musical tastes that way, I knew that there was no way I could
describe my tastes that way except in a very ironic manner. I listen
to what I listen to, and I like what I like. Some of what I listen
to, I don't like. Some of what I listen to is interesting though I
feel uncomfortable for finding it so, like the Adam Carolla podcast.
The EWTN stuff never fails to raise my spirit, I can honestly say.

I am getting old. I have
students who have never experienced a time where there weren't mobile
phones or the internet. And I just had a student who didn't know
what went on in post offices.

The gig is up? Wall Street
English has been punished for hiring part-time workers. For three
months, they will not be allowed to use foreigners, even their
full-timers, in classes. Hmmm...... I have also been told that
foreigners working part-time jobs could be deported. If that is the
way it must be, then that is the way it must be.

Friday [August 23: Tony's
Birthday]

[School Laptop]

I work today, 11:00 to 21:00, so
I won't be spending much time with Tony on his birthday. I have
given him a birthday kiss and sung Happy Birthday to him, but he was
asleep. I plan to phone him to tell him to look in the bottom drawer
of the dresser on my side of the bed to find a couple birthday
presents.

On the bus, I chanced to see an
old woman, slim and agile, walking on the sidewalk. It really wasn't
a special sight, all in all, but it struck me that she must have been
a pretty girl when she was younger for youthful prettiness seemed to
radiate from her being.

I could see road maintenance
workers, during morning rush hour, taking advantage of a red light to
conduct measurements among the stopped cars. It seemed insane and
dangerous to be doing such work among all those cars but I suppose
they weren't allowed to block off a lane in the interests of traffic
efficiency.

I was just listening to a podcast
of the reading of the book Heretics by GK Chesterton. Chesterton in
his chapter on Rudyard Kipling said that the peasant inhabits a
bigger world that the globe-trotter. I think GKC means that the
globe-trotter has only a superficial and narrow view of things while
the peasant thinks deeply of the things he knows intimately. There
is something to be said for that. Places in China that cater to the
globe-trotter are all the same and lacking something necessary to get
them depth.

Though the 85 Bakery has opened,
its renovation is not completely finished. The sound of power tools
coming from the bakery, which is next door to our school, is forcing
some classes normally held downstairs to be moved to an area far from
the tools. How is it that a bakery can be opened before its
renovation seems screwball to me , but that is how they often do such
things in China.

An old woman walks along the side
of the road, seemingly to me, in defiance of modern civilization and
its traffic rules. The bus I was in skirted by her.

At lunchtime, I phoned Tony and
gave him instructions to find his birthday presents. It took about
two minutes but he figured it out, and he was very happy with his two
new Tomica firetrucks which he found in the drawer beside my bed.

Two boys tell me that their
school makes them attend meetings of the Young Pioneers, a Communist
youth organization. The students tell me that they use the meetings
to do their homework. Asked what the meetings were about, the boys
told me they weren't paying attention.

Saturday [August 24]

[School Laptop]

I work 10:00 to 18:00 today.

Last night, I sat with my
sometimes 635 bus companion. I had questions to ask her about her
school with regards to what I had heard had happened to Wall Street
English which had received a three month suspension for hiring
foreigners part-time to teach English. She told me her school had
hired foreigners as part-timers over the summer. Some of the
full-time trainers even brought in some of their friends to teach
part-time. These friends were not from other schools but people
passing through Wuxi. One such part-timer worked three weekends
while staying three weeks in Wuxi. Leads to me wonder what it was
that Wall Street had done wrong, or the school where my bus companion
works hasn't been discovered yet by the authorities.

I then asked my bus companion to
help me read a passage from a Chinese textbook I have been studying.
She wanted me to pronounce the words which only confirmed to me that
it is hopeless for me to try to speak the language, and I should have
been learning to read on day one.

When I arrived home, Tony was
eagerly waiting for me because he knew I had a second present for
him, which was a fancy SIKU firetruck with ladder.

Now, let me blog about the now.
Here I am, doing the stuff I should be doing before I do the stuff I
want to be doing like reading The New Republic and watching Broken
Arrow 1950 with James Stewart, one of my favorite movie actors.

[School Laptop]

Taking
the 25 bus home after work today, I typed the following into my
Ipod:Rain！power
failure! Second of week!Shengyang
studentShirt
draped on shoulder on 25 bus cloth shoesDeep
puddles!Student
going to Xishan school because it has a good
environment兰州捞面。兰州捞面Man
beside me sees I can type some Chinese.Box
of live chickens on bus.

What
does this stuff mean? Well let me tell you:

Rain！power
failure! Second of week! I was
all excited because with my last class finishing at 17:00, I was
going to go home early, but about 16:45, I saw a thunderstorm was
rolling in. It then started to rain buckets and I was stuck at
school till the rain stopped. During the heavy rain, the power at
the school went out. It came back after twenty minutes but it was
the second power failure to take place at the school this week. The
rain did stop at about 17:20 and I went outside to catch the 25 bus
home. To pass the time, I made the blog notes on my Ipad.

Shengyang
student My last class of the day
was with one student, a male from Shenyang in Northern China. He
was in Wuxi to study design at Jiangnan University. I asked him
what he thought of Wuxi and he told me that he found it boring.
Being from Northern China, he liked to go to a pub and have a drink
after classes, but around the university, the pubs all closed at ten
PM. I mentioned to him about how Northern Chinese were renown for
being able to drink, and he told me that everyone in his family,
even his mother, liked to drink. I asked him what he thought of the
Nanchang Bar Street and he told me that he didn't like it
because.... Searching for a word, he agreed with my suggestion of
“it not being real.

Shirt
draped on shoulder on 25 bus, cloth shoes I
saw a man, almost shirtless, board the bus and come towards the back
where I was sitting. I say he was almost shirtless because he had
his shirt, which was long-sleeved and heavy, draped over his
shoulder. He had taken it off because of the humid Wuxi weather. I
looked at his feet, and saw he was wearing cotton shoes worn by
poorer Chinese.

Deep
puddles! The storm dumped more
water on Wuxi that its drainage system could handle so I could see
huge and deep puddles on the road.

Student
going to Xishan school because it has a good environment On
the bus, I recalled a student, who during a conversation class I did
about the environment, told me that she was going to the Xishan High
School near Casa Kaulins because the environment, her father told
here, was good there. I told her about the factory that was about
one kilometer near her school and near a freeway in a setting that I
told her was modern industrial hell.

兰州捞面。兰州捞面.
I thought I saw these characters on a Lanzhou Noodles restaurant
sign. Three of the four characters I recognized quite easily. It
was the third of the four characters that I wasn't sure about, so on
my Ipod, I changed the keyboard to pinyin enter mode to see if I
figure out what the third character was. The only problem was that
the bus pulled away and I couldn't remember what the third character
looked like and so when I typed the four characters above, I thought
I had it figured out; but just checking on Google Translate, I see
that the characters, I did see were as follows: 兰州拉面.
I had the third character wrong. It was la not lao.
Anyway, I do this all the time with my Ipod because I find it is a
great way to test my knowledge of Chinese characters. Now, I
wouldn't have made mention of my doing this, this afternoon, but
this fellow sitting beside me was watching me type in my Ipod and
seeing that I could type Chinese characters, decided to talk to me
in Chinese. It was torturous for me because I understood
only about twenty percent of what he said. He asked me the usual
questions of where I was from, where I lived, and where I worked. I
also think he asked me about whether I was going to University to
study Chinese and how tall I was. I think he told he was a worker
in Yanqiao. My typing being scrutinized by a stranger was unnerving
for me as well.

Box
of live chickens on bus.
I wonder what the man made of my taking
a photo of a box, filled with three live chickens, that had been
placed on the exit stairwell of the bus.

After
all this, I arrived home and I finished watching the film Broken
Arrow starring James Stewart. A great Western I thought. The
Wikipedia entry about the film said it was the first Western made
after WWII to portray the Natives in a sympathetic manner. The major
Indian character in the movie was called Cocheese a name which I love
and which I may not be spelling right. The movie has you rooting for
Native Apaches against the Americans who are, with the exception of
the James Stewart character, a Christian General and a few other
whites, very hostile and prejudiced against the Apaches. Spoiler
Alert: the ending brought tears to my eyes.

Sunday [August 25]

[School Laptop]

No work today.

I was up too late last night
playing on the Ipad. At 3:30 AM, I was preparing files of Elmore
Leonard novels to put on my Ipad.

Grinding noises come from a
nearby apartment. Tony plugs his ears.

[iPod]I
just wanted to watch my movie.

We went to the
Tesco and Wanda Plazas in the afternoon. Things were going as
well as could be expected. Jenny bought Tony a pair of shorts
and a cake. We were then having dessert at a place called
Honeymoon Dessert when just as we finished there, Jenny realized she
had forgotten the shorts she had purchased at the cake shop.
She ran over to the shop immediately only to find that the bag with
Tony's shorts was not there. Someone had taken them and
Jenny was pissed. Jenny getting angry is like a storm coming
in, you have batten down and wait for it to come to an end. I
never feel so helpless as during a storm... Anyway, it was
somehow my fault that the shorts were lost. I should have been
more vigilant and done more to help her when she was buying the
cake.

Tony wanted to go to the square so I took
him to get away from Jenny.

[Home
Laptop]

Tony
& I spend a short time at the square. After about thirty
minutes, we returned to Casa Kaulins where we ate the cake that had
been purchased, but we had no supper, and I dared not ask Jenny to
make any. Not standing the tension, I started up the Ipad and watch
the remainder of the Western film The Man from Laramie – what can I
say? I love Westerns.

No comments:

AKIC

I am Canadian. I have lived in Wuxi, China since September 2004. I teach English. In this blog, I recount the things I have seen and the experiences I have had here in Wuxi. I also make comments on things that strike my reactionary fancy.